Fr. Greg Boyle is no stranger to Loyola Marymount, and more than 600 people came out for his most recent visit, where he shared stories from his more than two decades working with the “homeboys” of Los Angeles, many of them part of his new book, Tattoos on the Heart.Boyle – who is called “G” by the gang members he works with – is the founder and head of Homeboy Industries, a Los Angeles institution that has helped thousands of former gang members turn over a new leaf through work and job training.
He spoke at LMU on Sept. 14, joining professors Douglas Burton-Christie of Theological Studies and Rubén Martínez of the English Department for a wide-ranging discussion of his book and his work with Homeboy Industries. Boyle said the focus of his work has been to help people build kinship, in spite of whatever barriers may exist between us. “It’s about inviting us to imagine a circle of compassion, with nobody standing outside of it. That we’re in this together; that there’s no such thing as us and them, that there’s only ever always been just us,” Boyle said in his talk. “So how do we stand against forgetting that we belong? That’s the effort of this book.” A born storyteller, Boyle had the crowd at turns laughing, fighting back tears, and mesmerized in a rapt silence. Among his tales were the time he took three tatted, ex-convict Homeboys to the White House for dinner with Laura Bush; the time he faked his way through a mass in Bolivia, only to have a redemptive encounter with a villager moments afterward; and the time a server at Homegirl Café thought she recognized patron Diane Keaton as a fellow former inmate. He was particularly pleased to discover his book had been placed on an unofficial “no-fly list” for Christian bookstores because, despite its stories of redemption and faith, someone might object to its salty language. “Shame on the whole bunch of them,” he said. Burton-Christie saw Father Greg’s book as a call to action. “It’s not a book that you can put down afterwards and say, ‘Oh, that helped me understand better Father Greg’s work with the homies in East L.A.,’” he said. “It’s a deeply invitational book, for everyone who reads it to think about what these questions have to do with my life, and with our lives.” Martínez echoed that sentiment, playing with the LMU slang “life on the bluff,” and the connotations of a sheltered, limited existence that it carries. “This book is about getting off the bluff,” he said. “That is what the mission here is about.”
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